British supermarket Tesco is planning to launch a smartphone later this year. The plans were confirmed by Tesco chief exec Philip Clarke in an interview with the BBC. He said the phone would launch before the year is out. He also confirmed that Tesco would launch a second-gen Hudl tablet in September.

Not much is known about the supermarket smartphone, but it appears to be Android-based. Oddly enough, it is said that it will have a spec comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S5. The Hudl tablet did not go after the high-end, it was designed to deliver adequate performance at a great price, hence Tesco sold more than half a million units.

The Hudl was priced at £119 at launch. A phone that would match the Galaxy S5 in terms of specs would cost quite a bit more than that. In fact the bill of materials (BoM) for the Galaxy S5 is north of $250. Stranger things have happened, but we doubt the Tesco phone will end up with a high-end spec and a hefty price tag.

British retail chain Argos has introduced a £99 tablet designed to take on Tesco’s Hudl, but we’re not sure that it can. Although the Argos MyTablet is £20 cheaper than the Hudl, it also falls short in the spec department.

It has a 1.6GHz dual-core processor and a 7-inch 1024x600 screen and 8GB of storage, while the Hudl packs a quad-core SoC and a 1440x900 display and 16GB of storage. MyTablet ships with what appears to be vanilla Android 4.2.2 with a few preinstalled apps like BBC iPlayer, Angry Birds and Facebook.

Clearly it hasn’t got much going for it, although it look cute and kids should like it.

“Millions of people have bought tablets during the last year but there is still around 75 per cent of the UK population without one. We know that tablets will feature heavily on Christmas lists this year," said John Walden, managing director of Argos. "At just £99.99 the Argos MyTablet is highly competitive with a great specification, and fits neatly in the range of tablets we have on offer.”

We wouldn’t exactly call it competitive as the Hudl offers a vastly superior screen, double the amount of CPU cores and double the amount of internal storage for just 20 quid more.

British supermarket Tesco has started issuing its own tablet as a rival to Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and Google's Nexus 7. The Hudl is now available both online and in stores across the country.

It is a cheap as chips 7-inch tablet which will sell for £119 along with 119 Tesco Clubcard points, and you'll get an IPS LCD scratch-resistant display, which offers a 1440 x 990 HD resolution (242ppi). The Tesco Hudl tablet features 16GB internal storage, expandable to 32GB through a microSD card, a 3-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel front camera and a 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 1GB RAM.

It also has dual-band Wi-Fi, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and a battery life said to last up to nine hours of video playback. Measuring 128.8 x 192.8 x 9.85mm and weighing 370g, the Tesco Hudl comes in black, purple, red and blue.

Chinese white-box tablet churners are doing quite well, although they don’t grab many headlines. For a couple of years they were perfectly happy selling cheap 7- inch tablets, at less than half the price of 10-inchers from big brands.

However, the Nexus 7 disrupted the market last year, along with Amazon tablets. This year it’s getting even tougher, as Google and Amazon revamped their line-up, and they joined by Acer, Asus, Tesco and Nvidia to name but a few new players in the cheap tablet space. As a result, Chinese tablet makers are turning to even cheaper components and targeting even lower price points. Most big brand low-end tablets are priced around $150, so white-box outfits are now forced to go even cheaper, reports Digitimes.

For example, the cheapest 7-inch tablet carried by Walmart is priced at just $49, while 8- to 9-inch models with dual-core A9 processors go for as little as $99. Prices in Europe are a tad higher, as usual. The cheapest of the cheap go for less than €50, while €100 will buy you a dual-core with 1GB of RAM and 8GB to 16GB of storage, which doesn’t sound bad all things considered.

However, the race to the bottom is not reserved for nameless outfits from China. The cheapest Asus MeMo Pad with a VIA 1.0GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage can be picked up for about €100. The same goes for the Acer Iconia Tab B1, with 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage and a dual-core Mediatek SoC. Archos also has a few models in the sub-€100 segment. Amazon.de used to sell the Lenovo IdeaTab A1000 for €99, but it’s out of stock.

Of course, there’s a ton of sub-€100 tablets from smaller, but relatively established players like Archos, Prestigio, Point of View and others. They all have one thing in common - €99.99 is the price point they’re all gunning for.

This trend is going largely unnoticed, as dirt cheap tablets are not something the tech press tends to write about. However, IDC’s recent figures indicate that the combined share of small tablet vendors rose from 26 percent last year to 39 percent in the second quarter of this year.

So who is buying them? We have a tendency to look at everything from a techie perspective, but low-end tablets are getting so cheap that they are competing with actual toys – and kids love them. For some reason, this particular niche hasn’t been filled by big vendors, one would expect to see a lot more dirt cheap, rubberized tablets designed specifically for the preschool crowd.

Several months ago rumours of a Tesco tablet started popping up in the UK. For those unfamiliar with Tesco, it is a huge supermarket chain in Britain – not exactly a tech player. However, in addition to groceries Tesco sells a lot of gadgets and now it has a rather impressive tablet of its own.

The Hudl tablet is priced at just £119, but many Tesco shoppers will be able to get it for even less, thanks to loyalty schemes. It has a 7-inch 1440x900 screen, Android 4.2.2, undisclosed quad-core 1.5GHz processor and 16GB of storage and a microSD slot. Due to the low price we assume it is powered by a Cortex A7 or A5 processor. It is possible that it's an A9, which would make it an epic deal.

In any case, it is a steal at £119, let alone less than that, or less than £99– which is exactly what many Tesco Clubcard holders will pay. Mind you, the good old first generation Nexus 7 features a 1280x800 screen, as does Nvidia’s new Tegra Note. Many cheap 7-inch tablets still ship with 1024x600 or 1024x768 screens, making the Hudl stand out.

This sort of devices is what keeps Google, Asus, Nvidia and traditional PC vendors awake at night. Last year we all praised the Nexus 7 for its $199 price tag, this year we’re seeing more and more sub-$149 tablets and some reports indicate that Google’s new Nexus 7 just isn’t selling well – as many users opt for even cheaper devices.

The Hudl is a great example that it is possible to come up with a dirt cheap product that doesn’t have a terrible spec. With the full weight of Tesco’s massive infrastructure behind it, the Hudl could be a winner – at least in the UK.